Ok, if you say so. Looks & feels buggy to me from a non expert user standpoint (mine), so maybe its more a matter of communicating why and when it might be useful to have opacity or other values set to more than 100% because right now it seems like an error to allow it, especially since the values spill over to portions of the UI they are clearly not supposed to.
Thanks

Will setting the opacity to anything higher than 100% cause any issues later on when I export my diffuse map? I'm lazy when bringing it back up to 100% and will usually just slide it to some random value past 100% (which is frequently). For the moment I also have to agree ecosky01, going past 100% feels weird as if it's a bug.

Please keep the depth setting going pass 100%. Some brushes using the stamp tool need to go pass 100% underwise the stamp is not produced with enough depth to see clearly. Sometimes I have to boost a alpha stamp up to 400 to 600% for the depth. If it got limited in the paint room it would also be limited in the voxel room.

This effects others brushes as well...

Someone asked that smoothing be limited to 100%, now smoothing is very weak at higher voxel resolutions... Takes a long time to smooth an area. I have created my own smoothing brushes because of this fact using the grow tool at a very low depth setting plus my own alpha and brush settings... I do not even use the smooth brush any more for either voxel or surface mode after I reach 1 million voxels or surface mode polygons after it was limited to 100% ,

100% is very weak in using some brushes for depth or smoothing and the ability to go pass 100 is necessary...

I would say that increasing the strength of 0 to 100% so that "0" would be none and 100% very very extreme... Then limiting the percent to 100% would be practical... but not now...

Depth in the paint room is for editing/creating things like bump/normal/displacement maps, isn't it? In which case if 0% equals a value of 0 and 100% equals a value of 255, going past 100% would be sort of pointless, at least if we're talking about 8-bit mapping anyways. By all means allow whatever values you want in the voxel room. Change it so that instead of a maximum of 100% like it currently has, make it go all the way up to 1,000,000% instead if you want lol. I'm just saying that for some things, like certain sliders in the paint room (the only room this mantis entry is about), it doesn't really make much sense.

Now if we're talking about 16-bit and 32-bit maps, then I suppose values greater than 100% make sense from a practical perspective. By expressing the value as a percentage running from 0% to 100%, you're creating a scenario where a 1% increase is actually a very large jump in the numerical value it actually represents behind the scenes. With 8-bit values you're jumping by increments of 2.535 for every 1% (256 divided by 101) which isn't so bad for painting something using opacity or specularity. However for 16-bit we're talking about a range that covers 0 to 65,535, meaning each 1% increment would equal a jump in value by 648.871 (65,536 divided by 101)! I'll let you figure out 32-bit for yourself.

I'm not sure how things are handled behind the scenes when adjusting each of those three sliders, but I'm assuming they're each based on 8-bit greyscale values (can't speak for smoothing, but 100% is plenty strong when painting an 8-bit RGB diffuse map). If it weren't for how the opacity slider currently behaves and Andrew's post above, I'd have guessed that the reason opacity specifically goes up to 200% is because of the jump a 1% increment represents when working with color, where you don't want such a large change. 1% only represents a change of 1.274 when you have a scale running from 0% to 200%.

So the question I guess is whether changing the opacity slider so that it maxes out at 100% instead of 200% would create a noticeable change when painting. I'd say no because opacity already hits it's maximum when the value is set to 100%, making 101% to 200% strange and somewhat pointless from a logical standpoint.

It's hard to decipher what Andrew actually means in his comment above. How can a value be outside a range running from 0 to 255? One would assume it should be impossible. If there is a good reason for why opacity runs from 0% to 200% and it actually is necessary, why not express the range as -100% to +100% instead? Or would the fact that half opacity (aka middle grey) is represented by 0% be too confusing, especially to newcomers who are using the paint room for the first time? If 0% to 100% instead of 200% is out of the question, perhaps we need a better popup that explains plainly what going over 100% means, and especially how it affects ones diffuse map (which I still don't know). And I won't even go into the fact that specularity has it's own somewhat hidden opacity slider...

Your points well taken, Zeddicus... My concern was only as stated if the "percentages are limited" they not only effect the paint room but the voxel room as well. We need more than 100% for now in the depth settings and in my opinion for smoothing as well. Of course there in no opacity in the voxel room but the others are..

Andrew has to be careful making adjustments to these settings because of the above statement.

Percentages are a standard in 2D application, 100% being at the top range but in a 3DCoat as a 3D application with "depth" and "smoothing" you need to go pass 100% as it now stands in some cases... Remember I am only saying this because if the paint room gets limited then that effects the voxel room as well...

Sometime, I think Andrew will need to have a complete look at how the percentages are applied strength wise and not go at it piece meal...

Excuse all my edits, I will need get my thoughts down before writing them...

I do agree that range should be within 0 - 100%. Opacity cannot be 200%. You can have absolutely transparent object or you can have absolutely not transparent object but you cannot have twice not transparent object. It sounds strange. If you need more steps, then you can have 50.39%, for example, but keep value in the standard range from 0 to 100%. Lets follow the standards in 3D and video design industry.

I've been pondering this ever since my last comment and Viper basically stated exactly the same conclusion I inevitably came to.

Thus for opacity, what probably makes more sense is a range of 0% to 100% using 0.5% increments instead of 0% to 200% using 1% increments.

For smoothing, increase the strength of each 1% by a factor of ten and then allow the user to select the smoothing power they want using 0.1% increments. At 100% your smoothing will be ten time stronger that it currently is now, provided the entire 0% to 100% range is linear behind the scenes (is it?).

If that is too much, then there is always 0.2% increments instead which would increase overall strength by a factor of 5. Hopefully you get the underlying idea I'm driving at.

As for the depth slider, I get the feeling that the one in the paint room shouldn't have any connection with the one located in the voxel room. I'm assuming the one in the paint room is basically an 8-bit greyscale value for painting bitmaps, where 0% equals 0 (black), 50% equals 127 (middle grey), and 100% equals 255 (white), which just like the specular slider are the only minimum to maximum values possible. In the voxel room you're not working with bitmaps but an arbitrary height that can effectively be unlimited in both the + and - directions. As a result, a percentage slider probably isn't the best way to go in the voxel room. Apples and oranges in other words.

It occurred to me while typing that there is another alternative, one that can be handled in a few different ways. Add a multiplier box next to any of the sliders that would benefit from having one. If screen real estate is a problem, they could be added to the preferences, similar to the boxes on the 3DX_Mouse page.

By the way I just discovered, while playing around with the depth slider in the paint room, that even though it maxes out at 100% when you click on it and drag to the right, if you instead hover over your mesh, hold down the RMB, and drag upwards, the percentage displayed will go above 100% oddly enough. It maxed out at 20,000% doing it this way lol. Didn't really have any affect when painting some depth on my normal layer though, acting the same as if I still had it set to 100%. Acts the same way in the voxel room too, though going over 100% causes a strange moire effect. My stroke wasn't any higher than if I had simply used 100% this way too (at least using extrude anyways, may want to experiment more).

First let me say this a good conversation. I agree with many points here, one that opacity can go to 200%. I just lived with till now, never quite understanding the why of it...

The points you made on the how strength for the settings calculated is valid, like a multiplier for depth. That is what I mean by Andrew not going at this piece meal but a very close look at how the how things work with the sliders and percentages.

You can type in numbers greater than 100 for depth also.

The normal map will not show the true depth because that is what it is a normal map based on a bitmap image.

You would have to be in microvertex mode in the paint room to see the real effect of increasing the depth pass 100% There you are displacing true polygons and is not based on a bitmap image.

If you want to see a representative of how the depth looks, turn on Show Displace Mesh under the view menu while in PPP mode. The displace feature for normal map was added if someone wanted real displacement feedback but the quality is not that great. It was not designed for that purpose.

I do have to disagree about your statement about going past 100% depth with the extrude brush. It does in fact make a big difference in the voxel room or MV mode in the paintroom.

The reasons for statements are not to disagree with you but just to add some caution, many, many users go pass 100% depth for some brushes,effects or use of alpha stamps.

At Mudbox
if you double click on the slider it seems to set the value for you. So for example.....

-select a brush, in this case the smooth brush.
-current range is from 1-100
-drag the slider to 50
-double click the slider, and now the value range should be set from 1-50
----------------------
- implement this... can solve all the troubles

(I dont like comparison and I dont think 3DC should be a clone of any app,Im just using this as an example)

I would like to see a slider like in Photoshop for values that can change in different range than 0-100. With the slider you can always see the default value (middle position) and minimum, and maximum.